It has long been recognized that the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) produces bactericidal proteins that are toxic to a limited range of insects, mostly in the orders Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Diptera. Advantage has been taken of these toxins in controlling pests, mostly by applying bacteria to plants or transforming plants themselves so that they generate the toxins by virtue of their transgenic character. The toxins themselves are glycoprotein products of the cry gene as described by Höfte, H. et al. Microbiol Rev (1989) 53:242. It has been established that the toxins function in the brush border of the insect midgut epithelial cells as described by Gill, S. S. et al. Annu Rev Entomol (1992) 37:615. Specific binding of BT toxins to midgut brush border membrane vesicles has been reported by Hofmann, C. et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (1988) 85:7844; Van Rie, J. et al. Eur J Biochem (1989) 186:239; and Van Rie, J. et al. Appl Environ Microbiol (1990) 56:1378.
Presumably, the toxins generated by BT exert their effects by some kind of interaction with receptors in the midgut. The purification of a particular receptor from Manduca sexta was reported by the present inventors in an article by Vadlamudi, R. K. et al. J Biol Chem (1993) 268:12334. In this report, the receptor protein was isolated by immunoprecipitating toxin-binding protein complexes with toxin-specific antisera and separating the complexes by SDS-PAGE followed by electroelution. However, to date, there has been no structural information concerning any insect receptor which binds BT toxin, nor have, to applicants' knowledge, any genes encoding these receptors been recovered.